VOLUME 11, NUMBER 1 A JOURNAL FOR THE THEOLOGY OF CULTURE
to say thank you for that. That’s just given me a lot to think about. I
appreciate it.
Smith: Thanks. I think we’re always doing them both simultaneously.
There’s no pure space to work where you’re not implicated by shenanigans.
It’s not like, “This is a bad place to work, so work in this better place.” Any
place we work is going to be messy. But while we’re doing that messy work,
could we also have another foot in another space that says, “Let’s try to build
this other thing.” I think if we do that, one, it actually gives us more power in
the messy place that we’re working, because we start to have people behind
us to support us in that messy work. But it also keeps us accountable. It says,
“This is what would help us in the messy work you’re doing, what would
help further the movement that we’re trying to build. So I think it’s always
kind of a both/and; it’s not an either/or situation. We do need those shortterm reforms, but we can also do the thing we actually want to do. And,
again, that’s going to be a lot of trial and error. Most, 90 percent, of the
things we try will be screw-ups, because we won’t have anticipated
everything that can go wrong, so we’ll only learn those lessons by going and
doing things wrong all the time. But the more we do it, the more we try to
run things, the more we start to say, “Ah, I’m starting to note a few things
here. This is st arting to work a little bit better.” But we only do that by
actually practicing. Any other last thoughts?
Man #5: Do you have any strategies or ruminations for how students can
decolonize specifically seminaries?
Smith: I don’t think you can decolonize a seminary, because—and I don’t
specifically mean the seminary, but the whole academic industrial complex is
just colonial. If you think of the logic of it, it’s based on the idea that
education is a commodity that you have to buy. So it’s not based on a
liberatory model. You’re not going to decolonize the seminary. You would
instead build the thing you want that would be based on different
presuppositions. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be strategically
operating within the seminary at that time to start a different conversation or
use the resources or engage the resources to build the alternative model. But I
don’t think we’re going to decolonize the academic industrial complex. The
academic industrial complex is based on a corporate model. We talked about
it: what school is supposed to do is to prepare you for a job. And look at all
the ways it prepares you to be in an oppressive system. Look at grades. The
grading system is based on getting you to accept capitalism, which I realize
many people support. That’s another story. But, again, what does capitalism
say? If you work hard enough, you’ll be rich. But of course no, we live in a
pyramid system. Not everybody gets to be rich. But if you don’t get rich, it’s
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